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Effects of an Inconsistency-
Detection Training Aimed at
Improving Comprehension
Monitoring in Primary School
Children
a a
Stephanie I. Wassenburg , Lisanne T. Bos , Björn B.
a a
de Koning & Menno van der Schoot
a
Department of Educational Neuroscience and
LEARN! Research Institute for Learning and
Education, Faculty of Psychology and Education, VU
University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Accepted author version posted online: 16 Mar
2015.Published online: 16 Mar 2015.
To cite this article: Stephanie I. Wassenburg, Lisanne T. Bos, Björn B. de Koning &
Menno van der Schoot (2015): Effects of an Inconsistency-Detection Training Aimed at
Improving Comprehension Monitoring in Primary School Children, Discourse Processes,
DOI: 10.1080/0163853X.2015.1025203
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Discourse Processes, 00:1–26, 2015
Copyright q Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0163-853X print/1532-6950 online
DOI: 10.1080/0163853X.2015.1025203
Effects of an Inconsistency-Detection
Training Aimed at Improving
Comprehension Monitoring in Primary
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School Children
Stephanie I. Wassenburg, Lisanne T. Bos, Björn B. de Koning,
and Menno van der Schoot
Department of Educational Neuroscience and LEARN! Research Institute
for Learning and Education, Faculty of Psychology and Education
VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Grounded within the situation model framework, this study investigated the
effectiveness of a reading comprehension strategy training aimed at improving
children’s comprehension monitoring strategies. Sixty-four third and fourth graders
received a 4-week training targeted at situation model updating, evaluative and self-
regulatory strategies, and metacognitive awareness. A group (n ¼ 51) following
the school’s regular reading comprehension curriculum served as the control
group. The inconsistency-detection training was expected to show a pretest-to-
posttest enhancement in comprehension monitoring strategies (measured with the
inconsistency-detection paradigm), general reading comprehension, and reading
motivation. Results showed that, compared with the control group, fourth graders’
inconsistency-detection performance significantly improved after the inconsis-
tency-detection training. Third graders did not show a significant gain. General
reading comprehension and reading motivation scores were promising for children
receiving the inconsistency-detection training. In summary, our inconsistency-
detection training was an effective means to enhance children’s use of monitoring
1
2 WASSENBURG, BOS, DE KONING, VAN DER SCHOOT
strategies required for constructing and updating a coherent situation model and to
transfer these strategies to novel texts.
INTRODUCTION
Heesters, van der Schoot, & Hemker, 2007; van der Schoot, 2008). Furthermore,
although the most recent international Progress in International Reading Literacy
Study assessment indicates that the average reading achievement of fourth-grade
students in the Netherlands is relatively good compared with other countries,
Dutch students perform significantly lower than in 2001 (Mullis, Martin, Foy,
& Drucker, 2012).
One way to improve reading comprehension is teaching children how to use
cognitive reading strategies (National Reading Panel, 2000; Pressley, 1998).
In the past decades, a considerable number of reading strategies have been
proposed to improve text comprehension (for an overview, see de Koning & van
der Schoot, 2013; Trabasso & Bouchard, 2002; van der Schoot, Vasbinder,
Horsley, & van Lieshout, 2008). The Dutch National Institute for Curriculum
Development (SLO) formulates these in terms of subgoals for reading
comprehension for the Dutch educational curriculum. Children in grade 4 are,
for example, required to infer meaningful relations between sentences and
paragraphs, recognize inconsistencies, and plan, navigate, monitor, and control
their own reading behavior (Aarnoutse & Verhoeven, 2003). However, a gap
remains between empirical findings and actual instruction (Aarnoutse &
Weterings, 1995; Andreassen & Bråten, 2011; Liang & Dole, 2006; van Keer &
Verhaeghe, 2005). That is, curricular textbooks for reading comprehension are
often inadequate, and the effectiveness of the included reading strategies is not
always supported by empirical evidence (Droop, van Elsäcker, Voeten, &
Verhoeven, 2012; Houtveen & van de Grift, 2012; Stoeldraijer & Forrer, 2012).
Moreover, relatively little teaching time is spent on reading comprehension in
Dutch primary schools, with even less time devoted to explicit instruction
(Houtveen & van de Grift, 2007; Periodic Survey of Educational Level, 2013;
van Elsäcker, 2002). In particular, the high-level comprehension processes by
which readers evaluate their understanding of a text have typically been
overlooked (e.g., Houtveen & van de Grift, 2007). The goal of the present study is
therefore to improve deep-level text comprehension in primary school children
by teaching them evaluative reading strategies. For these purposes, we adopted
EFFECTS OF INCONSISTENCY-DETECTION TRAINING 3
the situation model theory (van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983) to serve as our framework
in which we set up the training program.
The ability to be aware of the ongoing cognitive process and its results as
well as to adequately adapt cognitive processing accordingly is at the core of
comprehension monitoring in particular and reading comprehension more
generally and is often viewed as a key factor that distinguishes skilled readers
from less skilled readers (McNamara, Ozuru, Best, & O’Reilly, 2007; Pressley,
Borkowski, & Schneider, 1987). The present study aimed at teaching children
these types of monitoring strategies required for situation model updating. More
specifically, we tested an inconsistency-detection training developed to target
comprehension monitoring strategies to maintain and restore coherence during
reading.
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Inconsistency-Detection Training
Inconsistency-detection training consists of four stages, each targeting one of the
four goals of the training. In the first stage, learning goals focus on the reader’s
awareness of whether or not comprehension is occurring (e.g., August, Flavell, &
Clift, 1984; Baker & Brown, 1984; Paris, Lipson, & Wixson, 1983). Obviously, it is
useless to teach comprehension monitoring strategies to children if they do not know
what monitoring is and why it is important (Graesser, 2007; Yuill, 2007). Therefore,
children first acquire knowledge about the metacognitive aspects of reading
comprehension in general and comprehension monitoring strategies in particular.
It is important to note that, in our study, comprehension monitoring strategies
include relevant repair strategies (e.g., generating inferences, explanation,
elaboration) to restore comprehension when necessary. The importance of
maintaining coherence is indicated by introducing them to narrative passages
containing inconsistencies (Baker & Zimlin, 1989; Zipke, Ehri, & Cairns, 2009).
Although previous studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of specific strategy
instruction with regard to reading strategy use and reading comprehension (e.g.,
Brown, Pressley, Van Meter, & Schuder, 1996; Dole et al., 1996; Guthrie, Wigfield,
& VonSecker, 2000; Jitendra & Kay Hoppes, 2000; Yuill & Oakhill, 1988), the
present study is, to the best of our knowledge, the first reading intervention providing
strategy instruction based on encouraging children to detect (and resolve)
inconsistencies in text.
In the second stage of the training, children learn how to execute
comprehension monitoring strategies required for situation model updating.
Hereby, the focus is on strategies needed to identify and resolve the presented
inconsistencies, such as inference making and text-level information integration.
In the third stage, children are made cognizant of the multidimensional character
of a rich and coherent situation model. Recognizing different types of narrative
information in a text is necessary for indexing events along the relevant
situational dimensions (Zwaan et al., 1995a). Therefore, children are asked to
apply the strategies taught in the previous stage to texts containing different types
EFFECTS OF INCONSISTENCY-DETECTION TRAINING 5
we hypothesized that a more effective use of the reading strategies acquired in the
inconsistency-detection training would be reflected in a pretest to posttest
enhancement of the inconsistency effect.
When readers engage in updating and monitoring processes, it is more likely
they detect the inconsistency. In addition, we expected the inconsistency-
detection training to lead to increased general reading comprehension levels. This
expectation is based on the notion that comprehension monitoring is an integral
part of teaching reading comprehension, and, as such, it was reasonable to
hypothesize that training benefits would transfer to texts other than the ones
developed specifically for our experimental purposes (i.e., the inconsistency-
detection test). To increase the likelihood that improved monitoring strategies,
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METHODS
Participants
Participants were 115 third and fourth graders from four regular primary schools
in a large urban area in the Netherlands. The schools where the intervention took
place had a collaboration with the university, but participation in the intervention
study was voluntary. In accordance with a procedure preferred by the schools and
endorsed by the ethical committee of the faculty, parents were provided a letter
about the aim and methods of the study and could allow or deny the participation
of their child by returning a preprinted objection note.
Children with dyslexia (n ¼ 12) and an IQ less than 85 (n ¼ 6), as indicated
by school records, were excluded. In addition, children with diagnosed autism
(n ¼ 6) were excluded from the study. This resulted in removal of 24 children
from the initial sample. Of the remaining children, 64 children participated in
the inconsistency-detection training group and 51 children formed the control
EFFECTS OF INCONSISTENCY-DETECTION TRAINING 7
Design
The study used a pretest – posttest control group design in which the independent
variables were time (pretest vs. posttest), training group (monitoring vs. control),
and grade (3 vs. 4), and the dependent variables were inconsistency detection
(i.e., reading times on consistent vs. inconsistent sentences), general reading
comprehension level, and reading motivation. Pre- and posttests were
administered by trained research assistants in the 3 weeks before and after the
monitoring training and consisted of different versions of the same tests. The
order of the tests was counterbalanced across participants.
Inconsistency-Detection Training
Comprehension monitoring was taught in a 4-week training program containing
eight 30-minute lessons (two lessons per week). Specifically, half of the lessons
were instruction lessons conducted in groups (lessons 1, 3, 5, and 7) and the other
half were computer-based lessons conducted individually (lessons 2, 4, 6, and 8).
Instruction lessons and computer-based lessons were taught alternately, so that
each instruction lesson was followed by a computer-based lesson, together
covering one of the four stages of the training every week. That is, the four main
aspects, or goals, of the training program were taught in four corresponding stages
such that in each stage an instruction lesson and a computer-based lesson
comprised one of the four goals. All lessons consisted of a balanced approach of
direct instruction, modeling, guided practice, and individual practice (Baumann &
Schmitt, 1986; Brown et al., 1996; Houtveen & van de Grift, 2007; Palincsar &
Brown, 1984). Particularly, depending on the type of lesson, relatively more time
was spent on direct instruction, modeling, or guided practice (in the instruction
lessons) or on guided or individual practice (in the computer-based lessons). The
trainers who conducted the lessons followed standardized instructions and had
received elaborate training before the start of the inconsistency-detection training.
8 WASSENBURG, BOS, DE KONING, VAN DER SCHOOT
From the first stage of the training onward, children were provided with
practical guidelines that coincided with the goals set out for the training and
served as a means to help the children perform and learn from the different
exercises used to induce the required comprehension monitoring strategies. The
guidelines were cumulative in nature in that new guidelines built on already
established guidelines and just-practiced strategies. Inevitably, the different
monitoring strategies taught were related to each other and difficult to isolate, so
the presented guidelines overlapped in their content and use. Also, throughout the
training group-based discussions about how to carry out the monitoring processes
revolved around these guidelines. The guidelines had a prominent, recurrent role
in the instruction lessons and were practiced with progressive difficulty during
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the possibility to use repair strategies when necessary (e.g., rereading, inference
making). Questions that were asked during reading were of a metacognitive
nature (e.g., “what am I reading about?,” “does this still make sense?,” or “can I
resolve this?”) to raise consciousness of the comprehension process (King, 2007;
Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1992). When the children indicated that a passage did
not make sense anymore, they were asked to explain why.
In the second instruction lesson (Lesson 3), the focus was on specific
monitoring strategies to foster situation model updating: recognizing what is
important information and what is not, keeping the important information
available during reading, validating new incoming information against it, and
integrating all information into one situation model (Albrecht & O’Brien, 1993).
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Children were instructed to elaborate on what they read and integrate new
information from text with earlier encountered information. To illustrate this,
children read passages in which an action of the protagonist (e.g., eating a
hamburger at McDonald’s) was inconsistent with a description of his or her
character or goals given earlier (e.g., a vegetarian or someone who wanted to go
wining and dining in a five-star restaurant) (Albrecht & O’Brien, 1993). After the
first part of the passage (character description), participants were asked to
describe what they knew about the protagonist. After the second part (containing
the inconsistent information), children were asked to underline in the text what
did not make sense to them and to explain why. Finally, they were asked to come
up with plausible information that would possibly resolve the inconsistency (e.g.,
the protagonist may have ordered a veggie burger).
In the third instruction lesson (Lesson 5), children practiced again with these
comprehension monitoring strategies. However, in addition to Lesson 3, children
were made cognizant of the different types of information in a narrative text.
In particular, it was explained to them that the situational dimensions of protagonist
(including his or her intentions and emotions), time, space, and causation should be
considered the “cornerstones” laying the “foundation” of a situation model.
Children were taught how to process these dimensions to construct and gradually
update a rich and coherent situation model. They read passages of text of which the
main topics could be classified into the narrative dimensions of time, space,
causation, and emotion, comparable with the texts used at pre- and posttest in the
inconsistency-detection paradigm (see Table 1 for an example situation within
each dimension). After describing what was inconsistent in a passage and why,
they had to indicate the “situational nature” of the contradiction.
In the fourth instruction lesson (Lesson 7), the focus was shifted from internal
inconsistencies (i.e., inconsistencies within the text) to external inconsistencies
(i.e., inconsistencies between text information and background knowledge) to
teach children to involve their own background knowledge during reading (Elbro
& Buch-Iversen, 2013; Pressley et al., 1987). They were instructed to elaborate
on what they read and integrate this with prior knowledge. To practice this,
10 WASSENBURG, BOS, DE KONING, VAN DER SCHOOT
TABLE 1
Samples of Consistent Versus Inconsistent Situations for the Four Narrative Dimensions
Emotion:
Eric had just heard that he got an A on his Eric was very happy and could not wait to tell
last exam. everyone.
Eric had just heard that he got a F on his
last exam.
Time:
John’s train arrived 20 minutes later than Sarah was already waiting when John arrived
Sarah’s train. at the station.
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Notes. The combinations of the top context sentence with the target sentence are the consistent
versions. The inconsistent versions are obtained by combining the bottom context sentences with the
target sentence. Target sentences were the same in both conditions. Relevant information is printed in
italics for illustration only. In the near condition, context and target sentences were adjacent. In the
distant condition, the context and target sentence were separated by a neutral filler paragraph. We used
some example stimuli of Ferstl and von Cramon (2007).
the distance between the two pieces of conflicting text information. Research
shows that is it more difficult to detect “distant” than “near” inconsistencies
because of the increased working memory demands (Oakhill, Hartt, & Samols,
2005; Orrantia, Múñez, & Tarı́n, 2013). Practicing both these types of
inconsistencies presumably fosters transfer of strategies to longer discourse.
In the first computer-based lesson (Lesson 2), the focus was, as in the first
instruction lesson, on raising awareness about comprehension and text coherence.
During reading, children indicated the sentence from where a passage did not make
sense anymore by clicking on it. After that, they were required to click on the
specific words that caused the inconsistency and to elaborate on exactly why it did
not make sense by writing an explanation in a separate textbox under the text. In the
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Control Training
Children in the control training group followed the school’s regular curriculum
taught by their own teachers. This meant that they attended reading comprehension
courses twice a week, just like the children in the inconsistency-detection training
12 WASSENBURG, BOS, DE KONING, VAN DER SCHOOT
group. The reading lessons involved whole class reading as well as small group
reading instruction at their appropriate reading level combined with individual
practice. Reading strategies that were taught included predicting, clarifying, and
summarizing.
a wrap-up sentence. All of them were designed to match the students’ reading
levels and had the same structure.
In total, there were 16 within-subjects conditions formed by crossing three
factors: consistency (consistent vs. inconsistent), location (near vs. distant), and
situational dimension (time, space, causation, and emotion). Each participant was
presented with 32 experimental passages, 2 in each condition. In other words, for
every dimension, eight different passages were constructed, with four versions of
every passage (i.e., near/consistent, near/inconsistent, distant/consistent, and
distant/inconsistent). Table 1 shows an example passage for consistent and
inconsistent situations for each narrative dimension.
The stimuli were arranged into four lists, each containing the 32 stories.
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Reading motivation. We asked the children how much they liked reading
comprehension before and after the training. Children had to answer on a four-
point Likert scale represented by cartoon Figures (1 ¼ I do not like it at all; 4 ¼ I
14 WASSENBURG, BOS, DE KONING, VAN DER SCHOOT
like it a lot). After this, children were provided the opportunity to orally explain
why they did or did not like reading comprehension. The oral answers were not
documented. Their purpose was to give the children the chance to provide their
opinion and express their wishes for improvement.
RESULTS
Inconsistency-Detection Test
Analysis of the comprehension questions showed that responses were above
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1
The within-subject factors Location (near vs. distant) and Dimension (time vs. space vs. causation
vs. emotion) did not show any effects relevant to the intervention (i.e., there were no significant
interaction effects with Time and Training Group). Reporting all effects and discussing the
nonsignificant five- and six-way interactions goes beyond the theoretical scope of this article.
Therefore, we decided to exclude both factors from the analyses.
EFFECTS OF INCONSISTENCY-DETECTION TRAINING 15
Grade 3 Grade 4
420 420
Reading times in ms per syllable on target
380 380
360 360
sentence
sentence
340 340
320 320
300 300
280 280
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260 260
Pretest Posttest Pretest Posttest Pretest Posttest Pretest Posttest
Control Training Control Training
FIGURE 1 Reading times per syllable on target sentences (in ms) as a function of Consistency,
Time, and Training Group for grades 3 and 4. Error bars depict standard errors of the means.
79) ¼ 42.25, p , .001, h2p ¼ .35, indicating that children in grade 4 read
inconsistent sentences slower than consistent sentences and read faster at posttest
than at pretest. More interestingly, however, were the pre- and post-training
group differences in reading time patterns for grade 4. At the pretest, the
inconsistency-detection and control training groups performed similarly with
regard to showing an inconsistency effect, Consistency £ Training Group: F(1,
81) ¼ .99, ns. At posttest, however, performance differed for the two groups.
Specifically, children in the inconsistency-detection training group showed a
significantly larger inconsistency effect (i.e., slower reading times on inconsistent
than consistent target sentences) than children in the control training group,
Consistency £ Training Group, F(1, 81) ¼ 5.28, p ¼ .024, h2p ¼ .06. This pattern
of results was evident in the significant Consistency £ Training Group £ Time
interaction, F(1, 79) ¼ 4.47, p ¼ .038, h2p ¼ .05. In summary, these results
indicate that grade 4 children who had received the inconsistency-detection
training slowed down their reading more upon encountering an inconsistency
than children who had followed the school’s regular curriculum.
Grade 3 Grade 4
45 45
Pretest Posttest Pretest Posttest
40 40
Reading comprehension score
30 30
25 25
20
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20
15 15
Control Training Control Training
FIGURE 2 Reading comprehension proficiency scores as a function of Training Group and Time
for grades 3 and 4. Error bars depict standard errors of the means.
TABLE 2
Mean Reading Motivation Scores as a Function of Grade and Training Group
Grade 3 Grade 4
How much do you like reading Pretest 1.92 (1.16) 1.94 (1.03) 2.46 (.90) 2.02 (.91)
comprehension?
Posttest 1.83 (.94) 2.18 (1.01) 2.59 (.76) 2.48 (.96)
children in the control training group, the ANOVA indicated that the Training
Group £ Time interaction was not significant, F(1, 108) ¼ 2.23, p ¼ .138,
h2p ¼ .02. However, when the ANOVA was recalculated excluding the between-
subjects factor of Grade,2 the interaction reached a marginal level of significance,
F(1, 110) ¼ 2.88, p ¼ .093, h2p ¼ .03, with post hoc tests revealing a significant
increase in reading motivation for children who had received the inconsistency-
detection training, t(62) ¼ 2 3.62, p , .001, d ¼ .46, but not for children in the
control training group, t(48) ¼ – .52, ns.
DISCUSSION
2
Grade did not confound the effects of Training Group and Time, as evidenced by the absence of
significant interactions between these critical factors and grade. When using a more conservative
value of p . .25, it is generally permitted to pool across the levels of a factor to increase power and
create a more parsimonious model (e.g., Hines, 1996).
18 WASSENBURG, BOS, DE KONING, VAN DER SCHOOT
processes) after the inconsistency-detection training but not after the control
training, as evidenced by a pretest to posttest enhancement of the inconsistency
effect. That is, only after the inconsistency-detection training fourth graders
slowed down their reading on encountering inconsistent information, as
compared with consistent information. Applying the inconsistency-detection
paradigm as a main outcome variable at pre- and posttest is an important added
value of this study because it enabled us to provide a process-oriented perspective
on the effectiveness of our intervention. Online measures of reading
comprehension are thought to have advantages over traditional offline measures
such as question answering and self-report of reading strategy use. For example,
they are less contaminated by processes not relevant to internal text
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(Graesser, 2007; Markman, 1979; van der Schoot et al., 2012). Many of them
have been found to have insufficient awareness and knowledge of metacognitive
reading strategies (e.g., Baker, 1985; Markman, 1979; Myers & Paris, 1978;
Periodic Survey of Educational Level, 2013). However, applied comprehension
instruction research conducted in classrooms has typically focused on the
teaching of cognitive instead of metacognitive reading strategies (Cromley,
2005). The present study expands this research base by putting a strong focus on
metacognitive awareness in the training and shows that even in this case
spontaneous use of monitoring strategies may not show up.
The second major finding of this study is that the effects of the inconsistency-
detection training also transferred to general reading comprehension. Children
who had followed the inconsistency-detection training showed a pretest to
posttest improvement on our general reading comprehension measure.
A significant improvement was not seen in children who had followed the
school’s regular reading comprehension curriculum. However, this result should
be put in perspective, given that clearly different things were going on in the third
and fourth grade. In grade 3 the interacting effect of group and time on reading
comprehension was influenced by the poor performance of the control group at
posttest. Possibly, this drop in performance from pre- to posttest can be explained
by the posttest version of the reading comprehension test (for grade 3) being more
difficult than the pretest version. Assuming this is true, it certainly puts the
relatively small gain in reading comprehension performance in the inconsistency-
detection training group in a different, more positive, light. In grade 4 the
interacting effect of group and time on reading comprehension was influenced by
the poor performance of the inconsistency-detection training group at pretest.
Because of the schools’ preference that classes stay intact, we were not able to
match individuals in the different groups on the basis of pretest levels of reading
comprehension. Although this can be considered as a limitation of the study
design, it also can serve as an explanation for the specific pattern of performance
in fourth-grade children. That is, children in the experimental group started off
from a lower baseline of reading comprehension performance, but due to the
20 WASSENBURG, BOS, DE KONING, VAN DER SCHOOT
inconsistency-detection training they were able to catch up with their peers who
had initially outperformed them at pretest.
Importantly, a transfer of strategies would fit the idea that higher-level complex
strategies like comprehension monitoring that support the construction and
updating of a coherent situation model during reading underlie deep-level text
comprehension and that training these strategies fosters comprehension of texts in
general (van der Schoot et al., 2010). The fact that for the inconsistency-detection
training several measures were taken that would potentially facilitate the transfer of
the acquired knowledge to more general reading comprehension is an important
contribution. For example, the texts used for training contained several types of
incoherence such as that the distance between the two pieces of conflicting text
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information was either “near” or “distant” (e.g., van der Schoot et al., 2012) and
that inconsistencies appeared along various situational dimensions (e.g.,
Wassenburg et al., in press). Taken together, the findings suggest that despite
seemingly unaltered ability to detect inconsistencies in text, children in grade 3
apparently did benefit from the explicit instruction in monitoring strategies and
practice with the carefully designed texts, in comparison with children who had
followed the regular curriculum. This is consistent with the view that children in
grade 3 are able to learn and improve the trained strategies but only use them when
it is evident to the children that the situation asks for them (Rubman & Waters,
2000). On the standardized test for general reading comprehension, for example,
children answered questions about what they were reading and were encouraged to
make inferences, which corresponded to elements of our training used to induce
comprehension monitoring. In the inconsistency-detection test, on the other hand,
children “naturally” read passages without being guided by questions about the text
that supported them to actively make text-to-text or text-to-world connections.
Therefore, it seems that the inconsistency-detection test taps into comprehension
monitoring processing more implicitly.
A third aspect we investigated was the extent to which reading motivation
increased due to the inconsistency-detection training. Obviously, increasing
children’s reading motivation is desirable because of its positive influence on
reading effort, engagement, and reading growth (Morgan & Fuchs, 2007).
It should be emphasized, however, that this study only intended to provide a first
exploratory look at whether instruction in a situation model-focused reading
strategy would lead to higher motivation. For example, it is unclear from the
present study whether our one-item, four-point Likert scale is valid and reliable
enough to serve as a sole measure of reading motivation. Also, the scale
prevented us from gathering more fine-grained information on the various aspects
of reading motivation (Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997). Hence, using a more elaborate
questionnaire is recommended for future research to more thoroughly investigate
the motivational effects of reading strategy trainings such as the one described
in this study. Though the positive effects on motivation were not statistically
EFFECTS OF INCONSISTENCY-DETECTION TRAINING 21
reliable, the trends suggest that regardless of grade level, children who had
received the inconsistency-detection training enjoyed reading more after the
training, whereas children who had received the control training did not. This
finding is in line with evidence showing that metacognitive awareness and self-
regulatory strategies, both of which are central components of our inconsistency-
detection training, are related to both reading performance and learning
engagement (Bandura, 1997; Guthrie et al., 2004; Schunk & Zimmerman, 1997).
In conclusion, the present study shows that the situation model framework
provides a useful context for setting up a reading comprehension strategy training
aimed at comprehension monitoring. By comparing this inconsistency-detection
training to a control training (i.e., regular reading curriculum) that was as similar as
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possible in its form (e.g., lessons were held twice a week and involved small group
reading instruction combined with individual practice) and only differed in its
content, we were able to rule out alternative explanations related to adverse side
effects like instruction time and/or alternative explanations based on natural
development (Houtveen & van de Grift, 2007). Therefore, we conclude that teaching
children metacognitive awareness through explicit instruction of comprehension
monitoring strategies during only a 4-week period effectively improves strategies
that are required for situation model updating and can be transferred to novel texts.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank the students and teachers that participated in this study. We also thank
all undergraduate and graduate research assistants who collected data, provided
classroom support and training, and coded data. We thank CITO for providing us
with information on the standardized reading comprehension tests and assisting
in the assessment and scoring procedures.
FUNDING
This research was funded by two grants from the Netherlands Organization for
Scientific Research (NWO) awarded to J. Jolles and M. van der Schoot (056-33-
012) (NWO/NIHC [FES]) and M. van der Schoot (411-11-807) (NWO/PROO).
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